The Country Area Garages

A regular traveller on London Transport buses could hardly fail to notice the prominent racks
on both sides of the vehicles, carrying metal stencil plates. One had a pair of letters, the
other was numbered. To anyone interested in the operation of the buses they were invaluable,
since the letters described the garage from which the vehicle operated, and the numbers
described the running number for the duty being covered. In London Country days it became normal
practice to paint the garage code in white letters in place of the stencil plate. This was normally a true indication of
the home of a bus, but I am told that at least one vehicle from the closed Tring garage defied attempts to reallocate it
to Two Waters as the HH mysteriously reverted to TG during the night.

The designation of garages by letter codes was originated by the London General Omnibus Company from 1912. At first the
codes were not carried by the vehicles, but from 1934 the London Passenger Transport Board formalised and extended the
codes and they were applied across the red, green and Greenline fleets. Some codes were obvious, but others were made
obscure by clashes with central area codes. I hope that the list of links will be extended in future.

It was a source of great excitement to travel so far on a Rover ticket that the buses carried garage codes never glimpsed
at home. Here is an explanation of all the known country area garage codes, with notes on the garages as available. Unfortunately,
there is not a great deal of information available on the country area garages. Until recently, only two books had been
published on London Transport bus garages, and both of them covered only the red, central area establishments. Capital
Transport have now published a more comprehensive work (by Ken Glazier) in their usual detailed style, but it is about
London Transport garages from the formation of the LPTB until 1969 when the operation was divided. Even that was nearly
half a century ago, and changes in both the central and country areas have been profound as property values and politics
have driven the move to close, re-open or redevelop the valuable town and city sites.